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I’ve been out of town for a bit, and I returned home this morning to find some billing-related materials waiting for me.

The only actual bill came from Bay Imaging Consultants Medical Group. as far as I can tell, this has something to do with the x-rays I received in the hospital. This is apparently separate from the radiology item on my statement from the hospital. The bill lists charges for three items: “ORTHOPANTOGRAM”, “SHOULDER COMPLETE”, “FACIAL BONES, COMPL., MINIMUM”. The total charges were $147, but payments from my insurance brought it down to $53.79. The bill doesn’t say, but I’m pretty sure (based on my memory of some paper which I think I have in a big stack somewhere) that those payments come from my UC Berkeley SHIP plan, rather than my parents’ plan (which is supposed to be my primary insurance). I’ll have to give them a call to see if I can get them to bill the other insurer for the remainder.

I also received an explanation of benefits from the university insurance plan for my services from the oral surgeon. The insurance was billed for $3,720, of which $3,200 was for the surgery and $520 was for anesthesia. The insurance company has covered $1,831.82, and they expect me to pay $1,888.18. Of this amount that I’m responsible for, $146.21 is applied to my deductible, $457.95 is my coinsurance responsibility, and $1,284.02 “exceeds the allowed expense and is the member’s responsibility to pay.” For the record, I don’t really understand what all of these words mean, but maybe some day I’ll find out.

The last related document I received was an explanation of dental benefits from MetLife, which provides my dental benefits for the SHIP plan. This was for the repairs of the chipped teeth. The statement tells me that the fee for my services is ordinarily $372, but the dentist agreed to accept only $286 as part of his participation in Metlife’s Preferred Dentist Program. Metlife reports having paid $208.80, leaving me to pay $77.20. As I understand it, they are applying $25 to my deductible and then paying 80% of what’s left. I’ll have to ask the dentist if they are also billing my parents’ dental insurance. Either that or I will just wait until I have a bill before I do anything.

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I actually managed to sleep pretty well last night, which these days means five hours without interruption. It may be because I was exhausted from not sleeping well since the accident, or it may be that I started taking Vicodin to ease the pain.

When I awoke, the swelling in my face seemed to have subsided a little bit, but I was skeptical that the improvement was enough so that the surgeon would be able to work on me. Shortly after I had finished changing the dressings on my wounds (a rather laborious process due to the large number of abrasions), my ride arrived, and it was time for me to leave for the surgeon’s office.

When I got into the surgeon’s office, a man whose position I don’t know (but he certainly wasn’t the surgeon) had me confirm that I was on an empty stomach. He then seated me in a chair, put a mask over my face, and put me on laughing gas. I had never been on laughing gas before, and I didn’t find this pleasant in the slightest. This was partly because it gave me a sharp pain in the top of the head. Furthermore, the man tried to make small talk with me while I was on laughing gas, and I found it more painful to talk while on laughing gas than usual. I suspected that this was because I had adapted my jaw motions to minimize pain since the accident, but that the laughing gas didn’t allow me this level of control. I’m not much of a small talker to begin with, so I was thoroughly annoyed with this man, and I considered responding to him with a string of expletives. I thought that I could get away with it because I was under the influence of the laughing gas, but my better judgment prevailed. The man eventually realized that I had stopped answering his questions and saw the pained look on my face, and he shut off the laughing gas. As he did so, the surgeon walked in, and told him to put an IV in my arm.

The next thing I remember, I had woken up with my mouth wired shut and the surgeon was telling me that he hadn’t quite been able to get my bone to stay in place without wiring my jaw. He told me he wanted me to come back so he could look at my mouth in a week, and one of the receptionists asked me if 1:15 next Wednesday would work. I knew that I had class at that time, but I didn’t think I’d be able to communicate this fact, so I just agreed to come back then.

My friend drove me home, and I was actually alert and comprehensible enough to direct him to my house by a different route than the one that we had come by. He saw me into my apartment and left me with a container of oatmeal that he didn’t want and that I hoped to be able to drink through a straw if I prepared it right. My friend left, and I went to bed.

Just short of two hours later, I was awoken by my cell phone. It was somebody calling from the oral surgeon’s office, needing to know my father’s date of birth for insurance purposes. I did my best to answer the question, but she became frustrated when she couldn’t understand me at first. I did eventually get the answer across, but it strikes me as terrible judgment to have called in the first place given the circumstances. She should have known that I was recovering from anesthesia, that there was a good chance that I’d be resting, and that my jaw was wired shut. If she really wanted to know the answer, she could have contacted my parents (whose information I had provided for insurance reasons) instead; they would have been happy to answer and easier to understand.

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About

I'm Adam Merberg. I wrote this blog after I had a bicycle accident and thought it might be useful to document the various injuries (a broken jaw among them) that resulted. If you have questions about anything you read here, feel free to email me. These days, I don't update this blog often because I consider myself to be fully recovered, but I do try to reply to comments and emails.

Please note that this blog is not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. If you have reason to believe that you have broken your jaw, you should see a doctor.